Swizz Beatz Details ‘Poison’ Album, Talks Timbaland Battle

For the last few months, Swizz has been teasing his next project with various Instagram clips—including work with J. Cole and Chance the Rapper.

While out in Miami for his No Commission exhibit at Art Basel 2017, the super producer spoke with Vibe about his upcoming album, Poison, and battle with Timbaland.

“My mood is opposite from Harvard,” Swizz says. “My mood is opposite from No Commission. My mood is completely opposite from all of those things. I’m in a ‘put my hoodie on’ mood. I know I got a bright shirt on and I’m chilling outside but musically, my mood is bangers.”

“I’m giving people straight raw and uncut,” he continues. “I took all the commercial songs off my record, and I only left gutta on my record. I’m not doing a bunch of tracks. Just 10-12, straight to it.”

Now, if that and “Theme Music” from Fabolous and Jadakiss’ Friday On Elm Street project don’t get you excited, I don’t know what will. I’m hype right now.

As far as his battle with Timbaland? Swizz says it’s still going down and even alludes to both producers dropping albums on the same day.

“We had to push that back to until the top of the year,” Swizz says. “I think we’re dropping our albums on the same day, so we’ll see. It’s all fun, though.”

“It’ll be more celebration than a battle,” he continues. “I just want to change that word around a little bit. So battle is like ‘kill each other,’ right? You know, but we’re really celebrating each other by even having the respect to do that. We’re going to treat it like a sport. Come in with your game face, I’ll come with my game face and [we’ll] do what we need to do. Tim is not an easy guy; he ain’t no pushover. I’m not an easy guy either so this is a good one. It’s for the culture anyway. At the end of the day, nobody loses because the culture wins.”